Life Skills and Socio-Emotional Learning in Refugee Camps, Crisis-Affected Contexts and Parallel Systems: Evidence from Two Multi-Country Studies

• In Event: Building Cohesive Societies Through Education: Systems-Level Approaches to Nurturing 21st-Century Skills for Social Cohesion in Diverse Contexts

Proposal

Refugee children and learners affected by conflict and crises experience some of the most acute challenges in accessing continuous quality education. An estimated 234 million school-aged children and adolescents around the world live in crisis zones, while 85 million learners are out of school completely (Education Cannot Wait, 2025). These education disruptions impact not only children’s opportunities to build foundational skills like literacy and numeracy, but also key aspects of their life skills and socio-emotional learning (SEL). SEL comprises the process of acquiring a diverse set of personal and interpersonal competencies that are essential for individuals to navigate the changing circumstances around them, work effectively with different people, and thereby advance social cohesion (Jones & Doolittle, 2017; Zins & Elias, 2007).
Education systems, leaders and teachers in contexts of conflict or crisis often contend with major challenges in promoting their learners’ life skills and SEL. Many children relocate into alternative, parallel school systems run by community groups, faith-based initiatives or humanitarian organizations where governments struggle to deliver continuous, consistent and effective education. However, little is known regarding learners’ life skills and SEL outcomes in such settings, including the system-, school- and classroom-level factors that shape them.
This paper presentation therefore shares the findings from new research by two large international programs working to understand and improve children’s SEL. Since 2020, the PlayMatters project has used a whole-school approach across East Africa to build teachers’ capacity to integrate learning through play in primary and pre-primary classrooms. The training includes components to address SEL and focuses in particular on teachers serving displaced populations, although learners themselves hail from both refugee and host communities. The Education Research in Conflict and Protracted Crisis (ERICC) program meanwhile works to generate robust evidence on how best to support children’s learning, including their SEL, in adverse settings of conflict and polycrisis. Running for six years, ERICC conducts co-designed, mixed-methods studies with learners in diverse schools in countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
In particular, we will present the results of emerging data from schools in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jordan, Myanmar and South Sudan, looking at the relationship between different ecosystem factors and learners’ SEL outcomes in those contexts. Such factors will include school types, models and management processes, as well as teachers’ classroom practices. The SEL data will comprise adapted measures for empathy, emotional regulation and pro-social skills, as important components for building social cohesion and overcoming division, in each case captured with learners across a range of primary grades.
We will conclude the session by synthesizing the various study findings and reflecting on their practical implications for policymaking, program design and system reforms going forward. These will distinguish between recommendations having wider application and those most appropriate for learners in refugee, conflict- and crisis-affected settings. We will further situate our findings within the post-SDG agenda and 2030 Global Framework of Education, thereby supporting broader efforts to strengthen effective education for SEL, 21st-Century life skills and peacebuilding in challenging contexts worldwide.

Authors

• Stephen H. Bayley, International Rescue Committee

• Silvia Diazgranados, International Rescue Committee

• Jonathan Kwok, International Rescue Committee